'RCTI' criticized as 70m viewers miss World Cup
Muhammad Nafik and Kurniawan Hari The Jakarta Post Jakarta
Holding the sole rights in Indonesia to broadcast the World Cup on television could turn out to be a poisoned chalice for RCTI as the House of Representatives condemned the country's oldest private television channel for ignoring the fate of 70 million potential viewers who were missing out on the month-long spectacular.
Considering the number of viewers that RCTI was unable to reach, the House urged the nation's largest private TV station to share the rights with state broadcaster TVRI, which could reach 80 percent of the country's viewers.
"RCTI should be willing to collaborate with TVRI or other television networks so that the public's rights can be adequately catered for," legislator Bambang Sadono told a hearing with State Minister for Information and Communications Syamsul Mu'arif.
"This is not about only one or two people, but more than 70 million Indonesian viewers," Bambang added.
The criticism came after dozens of people in the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar held a rally at the RCTI branch office there following technical problems that halted the broadcasting of several matches on Tuesday.
Happy Bone Zulkarnain, another House member, agreed with Bambang, suggesting that TVRI seek to cooperate with RCTI in broadcasting the World Cup so as to meet the public demand.
"The money for this could be set off against RCTI's debts to TVRI," he added.
TVRI president Sumita Tobing has said that RCTI owes the state broadcaster Rp 80.5 billion.
Barita, a senior TVRI official who represented Sumita during the hearing, said the state-owned television company was ready to broadcast the international games, but the matter was largely in the hands of RCTI.
RCTI spokesman Teguh Juwarno admitted that the private station could reach only 160 million Indonesian viewers.
Asked about the 70 million viewers who were excluded from the World Cup party, he simply said: "That's the government's business. We should not be blamed for that".
He said RCTI had offered TVRI and the other private broadcasters the chance of jointly purchasing the broadcasting rights from the world soccer body FIFA, but they were unable to afford the cost.
Teguh said the rights cost US$5 million and his company had to spend another $5 million so as to cover the total operational expenses of broadcasting the games from May 31 through June 30.
"On paper, we've already broken even. All the revenue is generated from advertisements," he said, but declined to reveal the potential profits from the venture.
Teguh said the main sponsor was the energy drink producer Extra Joss, which was contributing more than Rp 35 billion in advertising revenue to RCTI.
Other main advertisers included the Panasonic electronics company.